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Although a photographer’s process is integral to his/her work, it is often a carefully guarded secret. Most photographers tend to keep the development of their work to themselves, sometimes choosing to seek counsel only from a small circle of trusted friends.

The artistic collaboration between Larry Sultan (1946-2009), longtime member of CCA's Photography faculty, and Mike Mandel began in 1972. Over 30 years they created 20 photographic projects, including the landmark book Evidence; exhibitions; the film JPL; three public commissions; and 12 billboard series displayed throughout California and the continental U.S. They evolved a seemingly authorless style; most of their works adapted found imagery from archives or from popular media, neutralizing the intended commercial or documentary content by uncovering and emphasizing the inherent banality. This substantial overview surveys Sultan and Mandel's three-decade collaboration. Five critical essays provide valuable insights.

The following speeches were delivered by CCA students at the spring 2012 commencement ceremony.

Brittany Luby

While I am proud to have been chosen to speak to my graduating class, I had to ask myself, What qualifies me to address my own peers, the very people who spent entire nights in the studio alongside myself? What advice could I possibly bestow upon those with whom I have been growing and learning in concert . . . other than "Ginger is good for settling an upset stomach, and always drink water."

I'm not quite sure, and hopefully by the end of this something pithy yet insightful will have fallen out of my being here. But for now, I think I would like to take this opportunity to reflect on the last four years and congratulate my classmates on following through to the end.

This is for everyone who slept in their studio. For those who took poorly paying freelance jobs only to empty their bank accounts again the next day in the name of art. This is for my friends who took two buses and a train five days a week to get to their six classes and two jobs (you know who you are); for those who left home without looking back to fearlessly take charge of their own destiny. You are the reason that I keep going, keep making, keep thriving.

In Southern California one finds “amazing, long, slow, sunny days that disintegrate into something totally gorgeous” all year round, notes Los Angeles-based photographer Amanda Marsalis, waxing a bit poetic about the California sunshine she’s become known for utilizing to its utmost potential.

Graduate and/or post-graduate photography education gives young photographers many of the creative and business tools they need to pursue a career in the photo industry. However there are some lessons that, for various reasons, student-photographers don’t get in school. While putting together the July Fine-Art issue of PDN, we reached out to 10 photographers who’ve graduated in the past few years to ask, “What lessons didn’t you learn in art school that have been important to your career?”

San Francisco and Istanbul: Both built across seven hills, on peninsulas jutting into major bodies of water, where East meets West dramatically and literally-continentally. Their respective situations along major global shipping routes means that they have always been rich in trade, rich in a cosmopolitan diversity of cultures, and rich in ideas: Just as the Bay Area has been a center of forward thinking, from the 1960s Haight-Ashbury counterculture to contemporary entrepreneurial Silicon Valley culture, Turkey -- and especially Istanbul -- is facing the future culturally and politically in its unique position at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and the Arab world.

It's this enthusiasm for exploration that originally brought her from Minneapolis to CCA, then across the country to New York, and finally back to Minneapolis in search of a creative career that felt like home.

She landed this job with Tremendous! Entertainment, the company that produces Bizarre Foods, in 2010. The show, now in its sixth season, introduces audiences to exotic and regional foods of the world, from Alaska to Thailand. As an associate producer, she plans the day-to-day pre-production schedule, researches people and locations for future shows, and coordinates the details of filming.

Within the next few weeks, the three teams of CCA students who won IMPACT Social Entrepreneurship Awards will be heading to Alaska, Tanzania, and Mexico to attempt innovative social transformations. Bolstered by the support of their $10,000 IMPACT grants and their community partner organizations, the teams -- KVAK TV, JuaBar, and 20/20 FOTO -- will work to empower three different communities to address pressing local concerns. Each team brings together a mix of graduate and undergraduate students from different academic programs.

IMPACT is one of the anchor programs at CCA's Center for Art and Public Life, providing students with opportunities to build relationships for social change. It is about innovation, community, collaboration, and making. It celebrates the entrepreneurial drive of CCA students combined with their desire to create a tangible, positive influence within a specific community.

Contradictory as it may seem, absence can be a potent visual tool for addressing representation. Whether exploring a setting devoid of its central subjects or presenting marginalized histories and persons that have been sidelined from the dominant cultural record, Tammy Rae Carland’s photographs can manifest human intimacies and vulnerabilities, sometimes without any body in the image.